Hi Alice,
Like John said, "The problem with Bobby is that in the wrong hands
(i.e. untrained), it provides useless information. But in the hands of
someone trained to do accessibility checks/audits, it's really no
better or worse than any of the others."
Bobby analyzes web pages and checks for a set of accessibility problems
that can be checked for automatically. It can be a good first pass for
checking web pages. I use it in my work. It is a good program. It's
also a very limited program. It can only help with the checking
process. The rest needs to depend upon human judgment of a
knowledgeable person. It has only a specific set of things that it can
check for; many of the accessibility problems that exist can't actually
be tested for automatically. So manual checks are needed.
Some people with a passing knowledge of accessibility may think 'If my
site passes Bobby, then my site is accessible.' Bobby is just software.
It does not understand what you meant to do or ought to have done.
I have some other tools that may be helpful to you listed at:
http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/tools#access
Laura
___________________________________________
Laura L. Carlson
Information Technology Systems and Services
University of Minnesota Duluth
Duluth, MN, U.S.A. 55812-3009
http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/webdesign/